


'Phage' - 1x05

by raktajinos



Series: Delta Drabbles - a Rewatch Challenge [4]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Cardassians, Discussions of Morality, Disease, Episode Tag, Gen, Introspection, Survival, The Borg, Vidiians, organ harvesting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/pseuds/raktajinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd judged them, saying humans would never stoop to such behaviour. But deep down, she knew she might be wrong about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Phage' - 1x05

**Author's Note:**

> the Vidiians are legit terrifying, but also one of the most sympathetic species ever explored on the show. And its always been kinda sad that Voyager wasn't able to help the Vidiians with the disease.

In all her years in Starfleet, all the missions she had been on, all the horrific humanitarian situations she had volunteered to help with - nothing really prepared her for the Vidiians.

There were worse monsters in the universe; the Cardassians did things that had disgusted her to her very core, making her sympathize with the Maquis early on. She'd frequently wondered why the Federation continued to deal with them as politically as they did. The Borg were terrifying in a different way; they weren't monsters in the traditional sense - they believed in what they did. The Cardassians did evil things out of enjoyment, deriving pleasure from suffering and pain. The Borg didn't see their actions as evil, they didn't want to cause pain. In their own messed up way, they wanted to rid the universe of pain; by creating one mind, one body, there was no suffering or evil.

The Vidiians though.....they terrified her. She kept her repulsion under control when she talked with them or when she was with her crew, but inside the bile had threatened to arise. It wasn't how they looked, that did not bother it; after spending decades working with hundreds of aliens and trauma survivors, appearance meant little to her. 

It was the explanation as to why they looked that way. Harvesting organs and flesh from innocent people across the galaxy; stealing what was not theirs, murdering and mutilating others. She couldn't understand how they did that, how their entire society shifted from having morals and ethics to being okay with doing this. To turning it into a socially accepted and normalized behaviour. 

....or maybe what scared her was that she _could_ understand it. Her gut reaction was repulsion and disgust, but once you got passed that initial response, there was a disturbing acknowledgment of understanding. She'd outright denied that understanding to the Vidiians, taking the morally superior position, but in reality she was probably the same. 

The Alpha Quadrant, humanity, had been lucky. Lucky to not have been afflicted with such a debilitating and horrific illness and lucky that there was such a strong network of allies that would come to the aid of such a disease. She was confident that no one, not even the Cardassians would sit by and let the Phage ravage their universe without lending some help. 

But if they weren't so lucky, if humanity had been the ones to get the phage, would they have resorted to a similar response? There were so many horrors in the history of her people, so many awful things happening right now - people doing evil things to one another. She wasn't blind enough to think humanity was some sparkling beacon of hope; they could be pretty horrible to each other. 

So maybe, if they hadn't been so lucky, they would have done the same thing. There was also the desire to live, to survive. The Vidiians were once a proud and diverse race who had been reduced to vampires by this disease. The urge to survive was overwhelming...so overwhelming it could drive a person to steal the life from another in order to prolong their own. So she could understand that, on a basic animal level. 

And it was that thought that horrified her. They were the same; their people were the same. They were terrifying; and the most terrifying things were always things that you could see inside yourself.


End file.
